Metropolitics

The Political Aesthetics of Drag

Shaka McGlotten — 2015-10-13T05:00:00Z

Drag, or the diverse art form and culture of performance that typically plays with gender and sex, is an integral part of vibrant urban life. It is also often decidedly activist and provocative. Anthropologist Shaka McGlotten uses ethnographic portraits of drag performers to explore how violent political conflict informs drag in New York City, Berlin and Tel Aviv.
Drag ecologies in New York City, Israel/Palestine, and Berlin
Drag is tied to gender impersonation and crossing, but it is also

- Essays / gender, Palestine, Berlin, New York, Israel, drag, feminism, BDSM, Featured, activism, video

Jerusalem: divisive urban planning at the heart of the Holy City

Vincent Lemire & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-06-19T04:50:00Z

How is the Israeli–Palestinian conflict reflected in the way the city of Jerusalem has been planned and developed? In this book, based on meticulous fieldwork, Irène Salenson reveals the various actors and the manifold complex and contradictory processes involved in this particularly conflictual urban-planning context.
As a revised and abridged version of a PhD thesis defended in 2007, this work – “Jerusalem: Building Two Cities in One” – by geographer Irène Salenson is devoted to examining

- Reviews / segregation, urban planning, Palestine, local governance, Jerusalem, conflict, Israel, religion, urban geography, geopolitics, local politics

Settlement policy in Israel. Transforming Jerusalem's contested metropolitan landscape

Marco Allegra — 2012-09-12T04:55:00Z

In Jerusalem, competition for land is central to the ongoing conflict. Marco Allegra shows how ideology can be less effective than planning policy in transforming a contested territory.
Israel's settlement policy – the settlement of tens of thousands of Israeli Jews in occupied Palestinian territory since 1967 – has transformed the material, social and symbolic space of Jerusalem, with the ultimate goal of including the eastern periphery of the city in a larger “Jewish Jerusalem”. Considering

- Essays / urban planning, Palestine, Jerusalem, conflict, settlements, Israel

Jerusalem: a history of water

Aude Signoles & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-02-29T05:55:00Z

The history of the Holy City is not just one of religious and national conflict. It is also a history of water, a rare and precious commodity in the region, control of which is disputed. In La Soif de Jérusalem (“The Thirst of Jerusalem”), Vincent Lemire recounts this hydrological history and, in the process, develops a stimulating and innovative approach to urban history.
This dense and innovative work by Vincent Lemire – the fruit of a doctorate thesis that is reproduced practically

- Reviews / Palestine, water, Jerusalem, Israel